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To answer the question "When do you know you've taught well?" no one answered that the students pass the test. Generally, all answered that some observed behavior in the students indicate that they "got it" and can use their understanding. After some prompting, others noted that internal feelings can indicate that something extraordinary has occurred. Can such feelings be trusted to indicate student learning, or do they simply signal a heightened performance by the teacher? The proof seems to be in a combination of observable changes in student behaviors and that energizing teacher's high.

Gold Dust for Faculty

Brookfield made a number of suggestions that any faculty member can use.

	The Student Panel: Brookfield starts off his course with a student panel of former students--of resisters, students who may have started the course disinterested or even hostile but who came to see value in it eventually. When such students write or call after the course and identify themselves as "the one who used to read the sports page in class" or "the one who kept falling asleep in class" and notes how they've come to benefit from the course, e.g. by passing the next course, Brookfield recruits them for a panel during the first week of the next semester. When the panel begins, Brookfield leaves the room so that his presence doesn't intimidate the listeners from asking frank questions or cause the panelists from to lose credibility.
	The Speaking Policy: As an introvert himself who dreaded finding the seats arranged in a circle for a graduate course or a conference session, Brookfield came to realize that a circle alone does not make a democratic classroom. [Wasn't Arthur still the king, primus inter pares, when he sat at the Round Table?] So he gives his students the choice. Although he finds it easier to hear when students are seated in a circle, he realizes that the circle and demanding that all students speak increases the intimidation factor. Not only is the teacher looking at the student who speaks, but everybody can look at everybody else even if they aren't speaking. So Brookfield lets his students know that they don't have to speak during discussions and he won't think less of them for it. Is the effect total silence or surrendering discussion to a few dominant students? Not usually, since students feel that the pressure to perform on demand is off.
	The Critical Incident Questionnaire: Brookfield puts this survey on carbonized paper so that he and students can keep copies. He processes answers to find the major themes in the students' reactions to the course each week. He also might note a few typical answers or even a few hostile ones, since he knows that dealing with resistance early creates trust, respect, authenticity, and therefore often justifies the variety of methods he uses during a course. The students process their collected answers for the semester to look for patterns in their reactions to the course. Brookfield calls the results from this questionnaire "gold dust" because of the value to him about what usually goes unspoken in most courses.

Letting Go?

Seemingly in passing, Brookfield noted a question and caused me to ponder one. Both of these I'll share with you.

2. Is it easier for veteran faculty to let go of tight control of the classroom and to use such methods as the critical incident questionnaire than it is for new or nearly new faculty?

Agreement on question 2 was voiced during Brookfield's discussion. That is noted for you on the next page; click here to proceed.

As he was speaking about methods, Brookfield noted that one reason for lecturing was to demonstrate critical thinking for students. So the logical question is--

3. How might a faculty member demonstrate critical thinking during a lecture? Is doing so impossible for any field?

One answer was received on Oct. 2, 2001:

Lectures should be almost all (at least half?) critical thinking as the faculty member is or causing students to be

	drawing conclusions from the homework reading
	providing examples to amplify the homework reading and explaining how they fit one or more principles studied
	linking the day's lessons with what went before or will come after
	presenting a problem that was faced historically by someone in the discipline, asking students for possible solutions or detailing solutions that were tried before describing the solution chosen or that evolved to solve the problem from political and logistical constraints

Another answer received on Oct. 2, 2001:

The second part seems easy: I can't think of any field in which demonstrating critical thinking is impossible. Okay, maybe AST keyboarding, but that's it. Virtually any other field will involve solving problems, formulating judgments, etc., at some stage.
As to the first part, it's "during a lecture" that raises the challenge. I assume (not having attended the lecture but in reference to Brookfield pp. 4-5) it means "How can a teacher, in the process of lecturing, display behaviors that evidence critical thinking."

The catch I see is: Won't it also need to be perceived as a demonstration of critical thinking--that is, not interpreted by students as another segment of information to be comprehended?

That raises a chicken-and-egg dilemma: Brookfield says that showing students these critical thinking behaviors will help teach them to think critically. But in virtually the same passage he points out that one justification for lecturing is the need to provide students with "assimilation or grounding in a subject area or skill set" (4).

How do students learn to think critically during lectures in a subject? By witnessing demonstrations of critical thinking in the lecture. How do they know that they are witnessing such a demonstration? By knowing how to think critically during the lecture.

The examples that Brookfield mentions in those pages do indeed model critical thinking of a type--but isn't it a little like the difference between lab "experiments" that are actually demonstrations with known outcomes (if done correctly) and true scientific experiments?

I have to think that what the instructor does in response to the products of students' thinking has a lot more to do with the quantity and quality of future student products--which is really the issue. After all, no one really needs any instruction in the elements of thinking critically. What they do sometimes need is instruction in how to think critically in public.

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